Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Left Field Later

An 11x14 drawing of the same field corner from a few days ago, but later in the day.

I picked up the Arnheim book, Parables of Sun Light, again. Two excerpts:

An early attack on the doctrine that art duplicates nature comes in Diderot's dialogue on the actor, in which he forcefully argues that a performance engendered by genuine passion would look ridiculous on the stage and that what looks natural on the stage must be an image calculated by the actor. Diderot speaks of a "paradox"--which it is, as long as the difference between art and nature is ignored.

My grandson and I were drawing pictures of our beach cottage on its hill surrounded by trees. Since we were sitting three hundred feet away and the day was dark, he had trouble discerning all details. I said to him, "What you don't see, you don't have to draw!" but realized soon how difficult it would be for him to follow my advice. It has taken Western painters many centuries to acquire the liberty of leaving out something they know is there. It is a brazenness not easily adopted by anybody entering the practice of art afresh.